The PSD president, Luís Montenegro, accused Prime Minister António Costa of “wanting to get the Portuguese used to poverty”, and warned that the Socialists will have to get used to a “demanding” opposition.
“The Prime Minister of Portugal wants the Portuguese to get used to poverty, but we are not going to get used to it,” said the leader of the Social Democrats. who spoke at the inauguration of the Beja PSD district, led by Gonçalo Valente.
In this session, which practically ended this morning, Luís Montenegro alluded to António Costa’s interview published last week in Visão magazine, in which the Prime Minister warned the parties to get used to the absolute majority of the Socialist Party (PS).
In the speech, the PSD leader spoke about the poverty rates in Portugal claiming that “half of the population is already at risk of poverty or it’s just not because the state gives them an allowance that keeps them from reaching that statistical threshold”.
“Because is [um limiar] only statistics, because on a daily basis they are still poor,” he argued.
And when the PSD, as an opposition, confronts the government about this “impoverishment” of the country, “what does the prime minister have to say to the country? Get used to it. This is what he has to say to the country, there itself get used to it,” Luís Montenegro joked.
“On the contrary, he is the one who will have to get used to having a demanding, firm, vigilant, investigative, supervising opposition” and able to “tell him face to face” that it is the Prime Minister who is “impoverishing Portugal” he objected.
And “don’t tell us that this is because of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, because there was also a pandemic in the rest of the countries of Europe and there are consequences of the war in all the countries of Europe, in fact,, There are several countries that have much worse consequences of the war than we do in Portugal,” but they have economic growth, he argued.
“And the truth is that all the countries of the East, all the countries that, because they belong to cohesion, have to bridge a gap to reach the most developed countries in Europe, are growing more than we are” from an economic point of view, he also stressed to the president of the PSD.
Still with batteries aimed at the prime minister, Montenegro accused him of creating his own cause with the interview given to Visão: “He himself seems to have become jealous of the ministers. It seems that he was jealous of the ministers and secretaries of state and also wanted to have his business”.
“I wanted to belittle the opposition, I wanted to give that regal look, in short, almost dictatorial, that he is above everything and everyone. He is the new owner of all this,” he added.
As on previous occasions, the chairman of the Social Democrats alluded to the extraordinary benefit of 240 euros for the most disadvantaged people announced by the government, recalling that this was an idea of the PSD.
But, by the socialists’ yardstick, “when the handouts are too much, the poor are suspicious,” because “the government is doing that this year because it knows that it is charging everyone, people, families, companies and institutions, this year, more than seven billion euros than last year”.
“The government is collecting more than double the increase in tax revenue it predicted for this year and so is using a skill, which is, as the treasury is now full, let us pay now for next year when it is difficult , say ‘but I had already returned it there,'” he argued.
Source: DN
